JLAcademy: The First Class
by cjp315
Summary: Damian Wayne! Kara Zor-El! Jackson Hyde! Jiame Reyes! M'gann M'orzz! In the wake of a new and radical Teen Titans, the Justice League decide to train the next generation of super heroes. Action! Romance! Intrigue! Plus: who is the mysterious Teen Lantern?
1. Prologue: Alley 723

Justice League Academy - Prologue: Alley 723

"TT" grunted Damian as he landed in dark alley number seven-hundred and twenty-three. He hadn't memorized all of the alleyways in Gotham in the months since his arrival, but he had charted well over a thousand now. Dark alley seven hundred and twenty three was behind the Laughing Fish - boarded up - and a block away from Gotham Harbor. During the day it smelled of fish - little wonder - and stale garbage. Tonight it smelled of blood and the rain.

Rain was tricky. Rain meant slick stone that could trick even the super-friction soles of his "action converse." Rain meant that Ace had been too scared to come out on patrol tonight. Rain meant Pennyworth was going to insist on drawing him a bloody bath when he returned tonight. He grimaced and sunk deeper into his black hood.

"Boy Wonder," Mister Zazz began, peering from under ruined sunglasses - the last remnant of his underground nightclub. He discarded body of a heavy man in flannel as if he were nothing and as he did, lean sinewy muscle disappeared under meticulously scarred flesh. He was smiling and naked from the waist up. His pants were the tattered remains of what had once been stylish red slacks. "I just want you to know that this is exactly what it looks like," he said, slicing a tally onto the side of his precisely shaved and carved head. He wiped the blood away with a palm and then stretched it out towards Damian. "Sorry," he smiled, "have to keep count. Now what can I do for -"

Damian rolled his eyes and kicked the maniac in the knee. It came with a satisfying pop if not also a screech of pain. The bald, stringy serial killer crumpled to the ground, his legs no longer able to support his weight. It was one effective way of dealing with a CIP like Zazz, Damian mused. Unable to feel pain, Zazz was convinced the disorder applied to his own immortal soul as well. His obsession with cutting tallies into his flesh with each morbid misdeed he perpetrated had been linked to a pathological fear of forgetting a sin. Damian found this rubbish, but if you went for Dr. Arkham for psychoanalysis, you got what your trouble bought you. Somewhere along the multiple trips in and out of Arkham Asylum, Zazz had picked up a meta-personality disorder reminiscent of the - Damian shuttered and tried not to think of crowbars, a locked room, black nail polish, and kaleidoscopic frenzy. At any rate, Grayson didn't know why, but Zazz seemed to snap back into his formal, polite breed of businessman mania when in the presence of Damian. It made him at least seventy-three percent easier to manage unless he had acquired a vast criminal empire again - which he hadn't. He'd tried explaining this to Father, but Father could be… inflexible when his son was involved. Sabotaging the Batmobile and making a straight rooftop shot had allowed Damian to beat his father and take out the more comically affected Zazz. It had not, he realized, been fast enough to prevent Zazz from killing whoever was lying dead at his feet.

Damian turned over the body with his shoe. It was a white man, overweight, bearded, middle-aged, grey ski cap. Most of his outfit could have been bought at Wal-Mart aside from his heavy rubber goulashes. A fisherman. He was covered in blood and - his eyes opened. Damian shuddered at the thought of smelling the fish-stained pig's last words but Grayson and Father's disapproving looks rattled around the back of his mind. He sighed and took a knee.

"I'll call for help..." Damian began. "Sir." he added and didn't touch the man. This wasn't how he liked to get a uniform bloody.

"Where is..." the man gasped, coughing up something too red to be dribble. Damian flinched but stayed next to him. His breath was as bad as he had feared.

"Where is what?" Damian, asked, hearing Father touch down on the building at the alley's mouth. His footsteps were silent for all intents and purposes, but they still sounded cross.

"Where is Wally West?" the man spat as if it were the last thing left in his lungs. He was still. Damian stood, turned, turned again, squatted back down, and closed his eyes. Beside him, Zazz writhed on the ground, scraping himself against the wet cobblestones - a quaint feature of the old Harbor area that never failed to make the night feel gothic and horrifying. Damian had termed this the "Gotham Effect". Kitch became horror quite easily. _Anywhere can be the worst place in the world_, snarled a deep, sniveling voice in the back of his head.

"He was mortally wounded before I got here." Damian said without turning to father. He was disappointed Father had caught up to him so quickly. He had planned to take a batarang to some of Zazz's tallies once he was gone - really mess with the pristine cuts and rows. If Gotham wasn't above deep psychological scars, Damian wasn't going to fail to meet them on their own playing field. But really, there was no wait. He'd be Batman soon enough.

"I could see," Father said with a deep voice that wasn't even a little bit raised. Damian could hear his father's cape billowing around him in the cold, rainy, night wind.

"Zazz is incapacitated," he continued, pointedly not bringing up his light sabotage. Wasn't the greater good what Father and Grayson were all about?

"He said something," Damian said and turned to his father. "Where is Wally West?" he cocked his head. "Who's Wally West?"

"I don't know," said Batman, and frowned. Damian looked down at the fallen man, the writhing killer, and shivered into his hood.

Behind his father, lightning crackled and flashed over Gotham Harbor. Damian's eyes widened, but he checked himself. It had been a frantic night. He was tired. A man had died and a madman lied gasping in ecstasy at his feet.

The lightning hadn't been red. Probably.

A/N: So this is set in the DCnU and in present. Meaning that Damian is Robin, Aqualad is Jackson Hyde, Miss Martian is not all "Hello Meagan" but a little creepy and mysterious (they are rebooted after all), Jaime's Beetle is way more aggressive, Kara Zor-El is fresh off the spaceship, and Iris West/Impulse never existed. That last bit is important. Happy readings.


	2. Amnesty Bay

pWhen Kara landed on shore at Amnesty Bay, it only barely caused a 2.3 earthquake as measured on the Richter Scale. She smiled to herself. She was getting better at landings. The stone at her feet had barely cracked at all./p

pShe looked out onto the Atlantic Ocean and sighed. Earth oceans were strange things with their high saline content and deep blues and greens. There wasn't a proper crimson body of water on the whole planet. Not even the mis-named Red Sea. She would need to get used to that, but doubted it would ever happen./p

pspan class="Apple-tab-span" /spanThere were six people on the tiny peninsula, but they were hidden by a thick fog that enveloped everything a mile inland. It would have been a small thing for Kara to pierce the fog with even a little bit of X-Ray vision, but she liked the feel it gave the day. Like magic or hidden things. Anyways, she didn't need vision to hear heartbeats or feel the disruptions in the air caused by body language. The first figure approached quietly by Earth standards./p

pspan class="Apple-tab-span" /span"What the hell is she wearing?" the figure said. He had a high voice which he was trying to make sound gruffer than it could. There was an accent around the edges that Kara couldn't place./p

pspan class="Apple-tab-span" /span"Damian," warned a much deeper voice that succeeded in its gruffness./p

pspan class="Apple-tab-span" /span"No," the first voice went on. "I'm serious. Is that a diaper?" Kara turned towards the voice and causally emptied her lungs. The fog blew back to reveal a boy who couldn't have been more than ten years old. He wore a black and yellow hood, red tunic, green trainers, and was concealing seventeen sharp objects on her person aside from the forty-three inside his belt. His eyes were glowing green through his domino mask./p

pspan class="Apple-tab-span" /span"It's ceremonial dress," she said. The boy looked around, shocked by something. Oh right, the fog. "Also, I'm relatively sure you were using the word diaper in the pejorative." Kara let her eyes glow red and made the temperature around the boy-Damian-go up about ten degrees. Not hot, but noticeable. A promise she could do more./p

pspan class="Apple-tab-span" /span"Kara!" said Kal sharply. He walked into the ring where the slight rise in temperature had kept the fog from returning. "We do not threaten children with heat vision."br /  
>span class="Apple-tab-span" span"He started it," Kara said, and hated herself for it. Kal had been an infant two weeks ago and now he was going to bark orders at her? And she was going to acquiesce? She'd changed his diapers. Well, she'd instructed one of the house drones to do it at any rate./p

pspan class="Apple-tab-span" /span"She started it when she put on a diaper and reverse knee-pads," Damian went on, his voice barely wavered as she bumped the temperature up another ten degrees./p

pspan class="Apple-tab-span" /span"It's cultural," Kal said, doing a better job than Kara could have to keep the annoyance out of his voice./p

pspan class="Apple-tab-span" /span"Then you come from a stu-" the boy was cut off as a black gloved hand moved fluidly over his mouth. The man who entered the artificial clearing moved with more grace than Kara had ever seen. His black cape followed like a swooping after image. He narrowed white, pupiless eyes at Kara, then paused and bowed slightly./p

pspan class="Apple-tab-span" /span"Kara Zor-El," Batman said, getting the enunciations perfect. "I apologize for my son. He becomes immature when he feels unsettled. Perhaps you're familiar with the feeling." Kara paused a moment, then turned off her heat vision. The fog crept back into the small circle. She turned on her X-Ray vision and turned to the company./p

pspan class="Apple-tab-span" /spanThere was Batman, Damian, and Kal, yes, but there were others. A man in golden scale mail with equally golden hair. A woman in silver bracers who stood a head taller than everyone else except maybe Kal. Another woman, a girl with short red hair in a long red hooded robe. Along with them were boys who looked about Kara's age. Both had darker skin, but one's hair was done in long clumps and the other's was hidden behind a blue baseball cap. One smelled like salt and the other smelled of ozone. Both looked slightly nervous. They were leaning against a thin, willowy tree that didn't look like it belonged with the craggy coastline of Amnesty Bay./p

pspan class="Apple-tab-span" /span"Thank you Batman," said Kal who then himself exhaled and blew the fog away. As he did, he applied enough of a wide band heat vision that the entire outcropping became clear./p

pKara was impressed. Kal had been a baby only a few weeks ago as she experienced time, but he knew more about their strange powers than she did. Now that others could see him, Kal stood a bit straighter and puffed out his chest a bit. Not enough to look pompous, but it enhanced his considerable stature which already looked more intimidating in his strange blue armor, almost a male version of Kara's own. But that was ridiculous. Men couldn't wear the ceremonial garb of Rao. It would have been laughable to anyone back home, but then Kara supposed on this world it was she who looked the fool./p

pspan class="Apple-tab-span" /span"I'm sure you've heard the news about-" Kal began./p

pspan class="Apple-tab-span" /span"Sorry, sorry," interrupted the tree. The two boys leaning on the plant jumped back and suddenly it wasn't a tree at all. It was a girl a little shorter than Kara with short red hair and green skin in a blue cape. She was blushing a deeper green in her cheeks. "I turned into a tree to avoid conflict, but then lost track of time. Tree brains don't function the same way that animal brains do."/p

pspan class="Apple-tab-span" /span"Trees don't have brains," said the one teenager in the blue cap. He was shaking all his fingers as if trying to order them not to do something./p

p"Oh," said the girl and tilted her head. "Sorry. They do on Mars. Did. Sorry."/p

p"Don't worry about it," said the boy with the hair clumps, though he was obviously unsettled./p

p"See?" said Damian. "That one's not wearing a diaper." It was true. Maybe Kara should consider investing in a skirt. Something that wouldn't burn off when she broke the upper atmosphere./p

p"Thank you for joining us, M'gann," said Kal. "May I proceed?" He said it without a hint of annoyance./p

p"Yes, please," said M'gann, almost a squeak. "Sorry," she added. Kara smiled./p

p"Thank you," he said and went on. "I'm sure all of you know about the band of rogue teenage superhumans who appeared last week in Brazil."/p

p"I always knew Drake was a-," began Damian. Kara didn't know who "Drake" was, so she just ignored him./p

p"It's a lie," Superman went on, not quite interrupting Damian, just talking so directly that the boy's comment seemed an inconsequential thing. "Red Robin is in pursuit of a radical splinter government agency called N.O.W.H.E.R.E., who have been abducting young metahumans and self-styled crime fighters for purposes unknown."/p

p"Which is why we should crush them," said the tall woman with dark hair and silver bracers. She didn't sound angry, just as if what she said was undeniable fact. Superman didn't argue with her, just turned back to the collective./p

p"Batman and I have decided that the Justice League cannot be seen going after a branch of the Government. Especially one that doesn't exist. Our celebrity status allows a degree of tolerance towards metahumans and crime fighters that didn't exist five years ago. People with the power to help shouldn't have to hide in the shadows." Kal shot Batman a look so brief that Kara wagered she was the only one who saw it./p

p"But," Kal went on, "that is what Red Robin and his companions are going to do. Flush N.O.W.H.E.R.E. out, allowing themselves to be captured or recruited if necessary. "/p

p"It is not right for children to do our work for us," the tall woman said. This time she did sound angry./p

p"I agree, Diana," said Kal. "Which is why we're here today. Our mission is two-fold. First, we want to create a network amongst young crime-fighters to keep them safe from entities like N.O.W.H.E.R.E. and any others who would exploit them. In that, you will be the first of many. Our second goal is to undo some of the inadvertent damage that the these "Teen Titans" may cause to public perception of young super-heroes."/p

p"Wonderful," Damian snarked. "In attempting to cover your own glorious bottoms, you exposed all the kids were ostensibly trying to protect to . Great plan."/p

p"It wasn't his plan, Robin," Batman said. "It was mine." Kara wasn't imagining it. Kal did look angry at Batman. She guessed this was why./p

p"And this is emmy/em plan," Superman went on. "That's why I asked the nine of you-"/p

p"Ten," Kara corrected without thinking./p

p"Tree girl makes nine," Damian said. "Do they not count in your advanced and important alien culture?"/p

p"The girl in the red robe makes ten," Kara said, pointing next to Diana. Everyone turned at once. They didn't react to the sight of the girl./p

p"Kara what are talking about?" Kal asked./p

p"Is your X-Ray on?" she asked. Squinting. But there the girl was. Short bob of red hair, deep red robe, couldn't be more than fourteen. She was looking at the ground at her feet and standing unnaturally still./p

p"It is now," Kal said. "Still nothing."/p

p"Oh good," Damian muttered. He has a sword in his hand somehow. "Godly powers, atrocious fashion sense, emand/em she's crazy."/p

p"I'm not-" Kara began, but she cut off as the girl looked up to her. Her eyes were red and pupiless. Her mouth was curved into a small smile that made Kara even more uneasy. Slowly, the girl raised her hood over her head and pressed a finger to her lips. And then she was gone. Kara blinked and looked around at the eight people before her./p

p"I'm not crazy," she said, softly. Suddenly, Kal was beside her. He didn't embrace her, but he did put a hand on her shoulder. She didn't look up at him. She didn't want to see the look in his eyes. It would probably have been too much like the quiet suspicion in Diana's. She gritted her teeth and pushed Kal off./p

p"I'm emnot/em."/p


End file.
